In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Alan Collett LITERATURE, CRITICISM, AND FACTUAL REPORTING Novels frequently deal with real events. How is it that some theorists have been able to argue that, regarded as literature, such novels are always fictional? The answer is that it is usually possible to show that a work which we are prepared to call "literary" creates an imaginary world possessing its own properties. Itcan then be maintained that this (...) imaginary world constitutes the aesthetic object of the work and that only those properties internal to it are relevant to aesthetic judgment. It then follows that the meaning ofthe literary work is this imaginary world and that criticism is properly concerned with its elucidation. Or, to say the same thing in a different idiom: we should distinguish in the things said by critics between those sorts of remarks which help to establish a text's meaning solely by reference to internal features of the text and those sorts of remarks which, if they are aimed at establishing meaning, do so by reference to external evidence. In the case of novels dealing with real events, those sentences which describe particular events, situations, characters, and places (reports)1 play a role in the creation of the imaginary world of the work. The real events described will, of course, often be known to the reader, and indeed the effectiveness of a work may depend to a large extent upon the fact that it deals with known historical events. But in order to avoid treating such texts as factual works rather than as works of literature we should, the theory goes, stress plausibility and coherence above truth to the world. Aristode's rule that "a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility" sums up the way in which critical assessment can guard against confusing literary 282 Alan Collett283 works with informative works. Literary criticism concerns itselfwith the plausibility and coherence of accounts of real events at the expense of their truth. A literary artist will, therefore, be judged to be better the more his descriptions seem true in contrast with the historian whose descriptions must actually be true. The literary artist, on this traditional view, endows the events he describes with meaning. When those events are real events their meaning will be intelligible to the extent to which they reflect a convincingly possible reality. The accurate reporting of real events is perfecdy permissible always provided the events chosen make an artistic point by functioning in the narrative in a way which is probable or convincing. Accuracy, as such, is never a criterion of literary worth. The fictionality of literary works dealing with real events, then, is connected with the skill the author exhibits in usingthe events he chooses to describe in such a way that a meaningful imaginary world is created. This fictional world will mirror the real world via its internal coherence which excludes the contingendy true in order to make a plausible artistic whole, and one function of literary criticism proper is the fixing of the correct interpretation of the meaning of this fictional world. A recent reformulation ofthis traditional view, offered by S. H. Olsen in TL· Structure ofLiterary Understanding? contains some suggestions as to how it is possible to interpret literary practice so that report sentences can be understood to function other than as the bearers of truth. On this view, a literary work, as a peculiar kind of utterance, cannot be interpreted without reference to some context. And although a literary work may be pardy distinguished by its textual or structural features, the mere possession of such features is not in itself sufficient to make a text a literary work. Textual or structural features, Olsen argues, will serve an aesthetic function only when the decision is already taken that the text to which they belong is a literary work. Since the function of sentences cannot be determined simply on the basis of their linguistic features, they will need to be interpreted in order to be correctly understood. Interpretation will involve making assumptions about the purpose of the utterances in question and the assumed purpose will then determine how their linguistic and structural features are to be understood. Thus, in one of... (shrink)

Introduction -- Facing up to paternalism in research ethics -- Preface to a theory of consent transactions in research : beyond valid consent -- Should we worry about money? -- Exploitation in clinical research -- The interaction principle.

While acknowledging its theory-ladeness, Chalmers (history and philosophy, U. of Sydney) defends the objectivity of scientific knowledge against those critics for whom such knowledge is both subjective and ideological.

Over 100 years ago, Frances Galton began the empirical study of autobiographical memory by devising a technique in which he explored the capacity for a cue word to elicit the recollection of events from earlier life (Galton, 1883). After a century of neglect, the topic began to re-emerge, stimulated by the work of Robinson (1976) using the technique on groups of normal subjects, by Crovitz’s work on its application to patients with memory deficits (Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974), and by the (...) detailed diary study of her own autobiographical memory carried out by Marigold Linton (Linton, 1975). This early wave of interest was focused by Rubin’s edited book on the topic (Rubin, 1986) which captured a broad and growing interest in autobiographical memory. This trend was reflected very strongly in the submissions to the second conference on Practical Aspects of Memory, in which the study of autobiographical memory represented one of the major strands (Gruneberg, Morris & Sykes, 1988), featuring prominently in both the opening and concluding addresses (Baddeley, 1988; Neisser, 1988). (shrink)

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The book provides a novel theory of the criminal law that focuses, not on when it is appropriate to blame and make suffer an individual character, but on when it is legitimate to deprive a free agent of its liberty and on how it is possible to reconcile punishment with individual freedom.

First published in 1967, _Writing and Difference_, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets (...) being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models. The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and _différence_—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. _Writing and Difference_ reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida foes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find _Writing and Difference_ an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it. (shrink)

By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture, and become instead a central element in elite culture. This book illustrates the importance of semi-learned mythographic handbooks in the social, literary, and artistic world of Rome. One of the most intriguing features of these works is the fact that they all cite classical sources for the stories they tell, sources which are often forged.

Elie Wiesel, plucked from the ashes of the Holocaust, became a Nobel Peace laureate, an activist on behalf of the oppressed, a teacher, an award-winning novelist, and a renowned humanist. He moved easily among world leaders but was equally at home among the disenfranchised. Following his Nobel Prize, Wiesel established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity; one of their early initiatives was the founding of the Elie Wiesel Ethics Essay Contest. The reflections in this volume come from judges of the (...) contest. They share their personal and professional experiences working with and learning from Wiesel, providing a glimpse of the person behind the public figure. At a time when the future seems ominous and chaotic at best, these reflections hold on to the promise of an ethically and morally robust possibility. The students whose essays prompt this sense of hope are remarkable for their insight and dedication. The messages embedded in the judges’ reflections mirror Wiesel’s convictions about the importance of friendship, the need to interrogate (without abandoning) God, and the power of remembrance in order to fight indifference. (shrink)

Although ‘virtue’ is a complex idea in Wollstonecraft’s work, one of its senses refers to the capacity and willingness to govern one’s own conduct rationally, and to employ this ability in deliberating about matters of public concern. Wollstonecraft understands virtue to be integral to the meaning of freedom rather than as merely instrumentally useful for its preservation. It follows, therefore, that a free republic must be a virtuous one. The first virtue of social institutions, we might say, is ‘virtue’ itself. (...) In a virtuous republic all citizens, from no matter which social group, are able to represent themselves in law and in public debate. This is a demanding condition, requiring not just suitably robust republican institutions but an open and accommodating public culture in which sufficient numbers of citizens are positively engaged in ensuring that the available stock of background ideas and values is representative, diverse and inclusive. (shrink)

Boehm's interesting hypothesis concerning the origins of human morality within egalitarian hunter-gatherer society relies on a one-sided view of the genetic inheritance of proto-humans, and on an over-optimistic view of the egalitarian effects of evolving human consciousness. The four papers as a whole would benefit from a richer conception of evolved human nature, involving the interaction of normative, affective, and rational elements.